Having contributed as a staff writer at the Spencer Daily Reporter for just shy of a year, Seth Boyes joined the Dickinson County News staff in March of 2017. In his first week at the DCN, Seth covered a train derailment near Graettinger. The tankers carrying ethanol burst into flames. Seth's photo of the event won first place for Best Breaking News photo at the 2018 Iowa Newspaper Association Convention and Trade Show in February. He won a second Best Breaking News Photo award for a shot of the fire at Zippers Gentlemen's Club that April, and also won awards for Master Columnist and Best Blog. Boyes graduated from Iowa State University in 2009 with a degree in Integrated Studio Arts. His original cartoons run regularly in the Spencer Daily Reporter and the DCN. Both he and his wife Janet hail from Clear Lake and have come to expect summers to be full of the hustle and bustle of tourists and visitors.

So long Vid

Posted Tuesday, June 5, 2018, at 8:46 PM

I, for one, was looking forward to Iowa's District 1 State Senator David Johnson squaring off against at least one of the three Republican candidates seeking the party nomination today. Sadly, that's not going to happen, as Johnson announced earlier this week he has decided not to run for reelection. So, I immediately wanted to create a cartoon on the subject. The problem was, as my editor said, is that local cartoons often come in two extremes. hey either have no teeth or they'll really tick off a large portion of the community a paper relies on for support. I think I've hit some middle ground here.

Caricature aside, the slight "swish" behind the papers to emphasis the implied motion went through about five or six drafts before I was satisfied with the arc. Thank goodness for digital artistry.